Question

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Essay: Differences in Politics and Religion

Discuss the relationship between China, Taiwan, and the US.

Deliverables a 750- to 1000-word essay:

Step 1: Select. Select one of the above essay topics.

Step 2: Outline Begin by outlining your essay.

Step 3: Write your essay. Using your outline, write your essay. Your essay should be at least 750 words and no more than 1000.

Answer 1

Religion and Politics

Both religion and politics have one common goal: that is to acquire political power and use it to fulfill their aims. However, to achieve this object, their methods are different. Religion mobilizes religious sensibilities of people in order to get their support to capture power; while politics uses intrigue, diplomacy, and makes attempt to win public opinion either democratically, if the system allows it, or usurps power with the help of army, if the society is under-developed and backward.

Therefore, in power struggle, both politics and religion make attempts to undermine each other. If religion holds political authority, its ambition is to exploit it to fulfill a divine mission. It claims that it derives authority from divinity and therefore its mission is holy, motivated to reform society under the spiritual guidance. Politics, on the contrary, bereft of any value, directs its policy on the needs and requirements of society where upon, it obliges to change laws and system of government accordingly. This is a basic difference between two approaches of religion and politics:

• Religion determines its authority on divine laws which could not be changed with human intervention;
• While in pragmatic political approach society should move ahead, change and adjust itself with the new arising challenges of time.

In its secular approach man is responsible to determine his destiny. He is not under the control of divinity to remain submissive and inactive. On the contrary, he is supposed to initiate and plan to build a society according to his vision.

There are three models in history related to differences in religion and politics.

• In one when religion and politics both unite with each other in an attempt to monopolize political power. We call it integration and sharing model.
• In the second model, politic, after subduing and overpowering religion, uses it for its interests. In this model religion plays subservient role to politics.
• In the third model both come into conflict with each other that subsequently lead their separation. In this model they appear as rivals and compete to struggle for domination.

The study of beginning and spread of any religion shows that every religion is started in particular space and time; therefore, main focus of its teachings is the solution of existing problems. However, with the change of time there are new challenges and a religion has to respond them for its survival. In this process, it has to adjust its teachings according to changes. With the passage of time, a stage comes when a religion fails to respond challenges of its time and finds hardly any space to adjust according to new environments. For example, in case of Islam, it took nearly two and a half centuries to complete its orthodoxy. Once the process was complete, it became in possible for orthodoxy to give any place to new ideas and new thinking. It was believed that any change in the structure would weaken its base. On this plea it persists to retain its old structure without any addition.

At this stage there remain three options for any religion:

1. Avoid and disapprove any change in its structure. If any attempt is made to reinterpret its teachings, such attempts either are crushed politically or with the help of religious injunctions. Those who claim to reconstruct religious thoughts; they should be condemned as enemies of religion and believers should be warned to boycott them and not listen to their views.

2. In the second option, religion has a choice to adapt itself according to the needs of time and accept new interpretation relating to its teachings and accommodating modernity.

3. In the third option, if religion fails to respond to the challenges and feels insecure, it withdraws from the active life and decides not to entangle in worldly affairs. It confines its activities to spirituality.

The helplessness of religion is obvious in the present circumstances in which scientific and technological inventions are rapidly changing the society and its character making it more complex and mechanical. Especially, with the extension of knowledge, politics, economics, sciences, technology and other branches of knowledge assume a separate entity that could be specialized and handled by professionals. Religious scholars are not in a position to understand intricacies of these professions and adjust them with religious teachings. This is the reason why in some societies religion is separated from politics and economics and it no more enjoys the domination over the society, which it did in the medieval period.